The noise rose and rose until the ground was shaking underneath their feet. Beli Ya’al detonated with fire, white-hot dazzling fire; and Larry staggered across the room and took hold of Linda and Frankie and Mikey and held them close.
“Daddy! He’s burning! He’s burning!” screamed Mikey.
“I’ll tell you another truth!” Larry shouted at Beli Ya’al. “I love my family more than you could ever hunger for anything!”
There was a moment when Larry felt as if the whole world were sliding away.
Beli Ya’al turned to him with a face of fire, and eyes of fire, and a mouth that spouted roaring flames.
“A CURSE ON YOU,” he thundered.
Then, with a sound like a monstrous door slamming, he burst apart. The room exploded in a welter of skulls and bones and torn clothes and bloody remains; a huge sickening volcano of undigested flesh and blood. Scarlet muscle was splattered all over the white-painted walls, torsos and hands and thigh-bones emptied out all over the floor.
With a blinding crackle of psychic energy, Beli Ya’al vanished, sucked back to his coffin by the same greed that had resurrected him. Beli Ya’al was back in the limbo to which God had condemned him. Only the grisly half-chewed remains of those he had eaten had remained behind.
Larry led Linda and Frankie and Mikey out of the gore-splattered, smoke-filled room and closed the door. The boys were white and trembling, but silent. Linda had her hand pressed over her mouth.
“What was it?” she said, again and again. “What was it?”
“It’s over,” said Larry. “It’s gone now.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He hugged his family close and he couldn’t even cry.
“Call Houston,” he told Linda. “Call Houston and tell him what happened. Then go over to the Marshalls. I’ll join you there in just a while.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Linda, trembling. “You’re not going back in there?”
“I saw something,” said Larry. “I have to be sure.”
Linda reluctantly took Frankie and Mikey into the kitchen. Larry made sure they were gone, and then he opened the living-room door again, and stepped back in. It was impossible not to tread on blood and stripped-apart skin.
In the tangled heap of human remains he had seen a face; and that face had looked as if it were still alive.
He found Arne’s arm. He recognized it by the Rolex wristwatch, blood-smeared but still ticking. He found a white-skinned female torso, bare-breasted, headless, still wearing the pale-blue remnants of Fay Kuhn’s tailored suit. He saw a gray bloodstained sock that must have belonged to Dan Burroughs.
And behind the couch, one-legged, one-armed, smothered in blood and mucus and reeking of bile, he found Dan Burroughs himself. His eyes were glazed, but he was still breathing, a shallow bubble of blood swelling out from between his lips.
Larry knelt down beside him, trying to ignore the blood on the floor.
“Dan?” he said, lifting his head in his hands. “Dan, can you hear me?”
Dan coughed, and blood ran out of the side of his mouth.
“I’m dying, Larry. I thought I was dead already.”
“Dan, he’s gone, Dan. Beli Ya’al’s gone.”
There was a long wheezing pause, and then Dan said, “Thank God.”
“Can you hold on? I’ll call the paramedics.”
Dan gave a bloody cackle. “Too late for that, Larry. Far too late for that. Just forgive me, that’s all. That’s all I need, forgiveness.”
Larry said nothing, but took hold of Dan’s remaining hand and squeezed it.
“He offered so much… money, power… you don’t have any idea. He offered so much. I had a shadow—shadow on my lung—and he offered me health—you know that?—and life, and money. Seemed too good to be true.”
He coughed up more blood, and then he said, “There’s a list, Larry… all of those politicians and businessmen who were in it with me… back at my house… third drawer down… locked.”
“Don’t worry, Dan, I’ll take care of it.”
Dan looked at him sideways, despairingly. “He’s really gone? Beli Ya’al’s really gone?”
“Until the next time, Dan. Until somebody else gets too greedy.”
Dan nodded, and died. Larry knelt beside him for a moment, and then stood up, and looked around the carnage of his living-room. Beli Ya’al had gone, for sure. But all he could think about was all the nightmares that he was going to have to endure, before Beli Ya’al would finally leave him be.
*
Early the next day, Larry guided city engineers down to the lower level of the disused underground parking-lot on Green Street.
They found the cavity in the wall, but the tremors of Beli Ya’al’s departure had brought down the walls of the basement beyond it, and blocked it with hundreds of tons of gravel and silt.
Larry stood and watched as city engineers filled the tunnel with concrete. They smoked and whistled while they worked. Two truckloads of concrete wouldn’t prevent Beli Ya’al from getting out; nothing could do that. But it would stop anybody else from getting in.
*
Afterwards, he went to his mother’s house, and sat for an hour, looking through his father’s old papers and letters. He could find no references to Dan Burroughs; but at the back of the bottom drawer, with its edge caught under the wooden beading, he discovered a faded black-and-white photograph of two men drinking at a bar. They were raising their glasses to each other and smiling in satisfaction, as if they had just struck the best deal of their lives.
The man in the dark suit on the left was Mario Foggia. The man in the gray suit on the right was Dan Burroughs.
Larry stared at the photograph for a long time, tapping it against his thumbnail. Then he ripped it up and dropped it into the waste-paper basket.
He opened the front door to leave. It was a warm, hazy afternoon: and he suddenly began to feel good again. He was about to close the door, when there was a sudden flurry of wings, and a flustered gray shape flew past him and into the house.
“Well, I’ll be—” he said, and walked back into the living-room.
Mussolini was sitting, bedraggled, on his perch. “Che violino!” he cackled. “Che violino!”
Larry approached the cage and tapped his finger against the bars. “Well, well, and where have you been?”
“Che violino!” screeched Mussolini.
Larry opened his coat and took out his .38. He pushed it through the bars of the cage, and without hesitation, fired.
The echoes died away. Smoke drifted lazily across the old, antique-furnished living-room. Gray feathers see-sawed down from the ceiling, one by one.
Larry closed the living-room door behind him, smoothed his hair in the hall mirror, then stepped out into the sun.
That night, as Larry slept exhausted on the couch at the Marshall’s house across the street, the skeins began to drift across the palm of his hand.
They drifted lazy and slow, forming themselves into tangles and cobwebs. Then, after a while, a face appeared; a face that moved and smiled like a 16 mm movie from long ago.
“Time to feed, my friend. Time to feed.” murmured a flat and familiar voice. Larry stirred, and his fingers twitched, but he didn’t wake up.
“…if you must, dust if you don’t…” the voice went on.
Larry was dreaming that he was wading through ankle-deep water in echoing darkness. He knew that he was approaching something terrible.
He was frightened, in his dream. So frightened that he didn’t know whether he could wade forward any further.
But still he didn’t wake up.
Still he didn’t open his eyes and see that the face on the palm of his hand was his own.
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About Graham Masterton
GRAHAM MASTERTON was a bestselling horror writer for many years before he turned his talent to crime. He lived in Cork for five years, an experience that inspired the Katie Maguire series.
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About the Katie Maguire Series
Katie Maguire was one of seven sisters born to a police Inspector in Cork, but the only sister who decided to follow her father into An Garda Siochana.
With her bright green eyes and short redhair, she looks like an Irish pixie, but she is no soft touch. To the dismay of some of her male subordinates, she rose quickly through the ranks, gaining a reputation for catching Cork’s killers, often at great personal cost.
Katie spent seven years in a turbulent marriage in which she bore, and lost, a son – an event that continues to haunt her. Despite facing turmoil at home and prejudice at work, she is one of the most fearless detectives in Ireland.
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London, 1750
Beatrice Scarlet is the apothecary’s daughter. She can mix medicines and herbs to save the lives of her neighbours - but, try as she might, she can’t save the lives of her parents. An orphan at just sixteen, Beatrice marries a preacher and emigrates to America.
New Hampshire, 1756
In the farming community where Beatrice now lives, six pigs are found viciously slaughtered; slices of looking-glass embedded in their mouths. According to scripture, this is the work of Satan - but Beatrice Scarlet suspects the hands of men. As she closes in on the killer, she must act quickly to unmask him - or become the next victim herself…
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First published in the Great Britain in 1991 by Mandarin
This eBook edition first published in the UK in 2017 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Graham Masterton, 2017
The moral right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781786695567
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